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Moriarty Says BETTIE PAGE Makes Him Feel Funny!!
Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
And not funny-ha-ha, either.
Mary Harron has only made three feature films, but I think it’s safe to say she’s the real deal, an artist with a unique voice who seems to be building a substantial body of work, slowly but surely. Her first film, I SHOT ANDY WARHOL, was a great showcase for Lili Taylor, a great ‘60s film, and it also seemed like a savvy comment on the ripples that we still feel now caused by Warhol’s prescient observation about everyone’s fifteen minutes of fame. AMERICAN PSYCHO was a film that managed to take an impossible-to-adapt book and turn it into something that made the same cogent points about ‘80s excess and corporate greed without wallowing in the creepier corners of the novel.
Now she takes on another decade and another huge theme, and does it by focusing on one of the most potent American sexual icons of the ‘50s. Telling the personal story of Bettie Page allows Harron and her screenwriter, Guinevere Turner, to comment on the strange mix of repression and freedom that defined sexuality in that era. Bettie, played with glorious abandon by Gretchen Mol, starts out as a good girl, on track to become the valedictorian of her high school. When she falls just a touch short, things start to suddenly not add up to what Bettie had planned for her life. She suffers through one rotten marriage, then takes off in pursuit of a new goal, determined to act. She’s so innocent, so open in the way she approaches people that it’s inevitable she gets hurt, more than once. And still... there’s something sunny about her. Bettie never seems to give in to that thing that changes so many people in LA, that turns them bitter. And it’s not an act... it’s just something about her essential nature. When she stumbles into photography modeling one day on the beach (literally), it’s like Arthur pulling the sword from the stone. There’s something so natural about the way she simply embraces this gift she has. And it’s funny... you write that, and there’s the temptation to be glib about it or to snicker. After all, she was just a model.
Sure, she started out doing bathing suit shots. And she only gradually worked her way up to a few innocent nudes for a private photography club. And when she met Irving Klaw (Chris Bauer) and his sister Paula (Lili Taylor), she didn’t see how it was any different. She just had more elaborate costumes to wear. And for the most part, the work she did was elaborate and theatrical and all about fantasy. She isn’t a significant player in American history or anything. But she’s fascinating in the way the best personal stories are... because of the way her spirit rebounds from situation to situation... and because of the sheer joy she took from her life. It’s hard when you live in LA or New York and you’re struggling at what you do. It’s hard to live close to it, but to not be a part of it. It makes people crazy. It makes them desperate. It can crush them with loneliness. But not Bettie Page. And that’s what Gretchen Mol plays so beautifully. That’s what makes the film really work.
Technically, it’s a blast. The use of color versus black-and-white is very carefully considered, and it works for the film dramatically. Harron doesn’t make aesthetic choices with an arbitrary eye. Her sense of period detail is a lot of fun without turning into a sitcom. Mott Hupfrel, the film’s cinematographer, is a relative newcomer, having only worked on much smaller films like THE AMERICAN ASTRONAUT or the controversial documentary FRAT HOUSE. His work here is playful and ballsy, and it pays off. You can tell that this is a modestly budgeted film, but it’s not “cheap” by any means. Harron’s got a lot of control, and she’s presenting a very specific version of a cotton-candy-idealized-1950s. Gideon Ponte, her production designer, has a pretty good-looking resume so far (SERIES 7, Almereyda’s HAMLET, BUFFALO ’66, and, of course, AMERICAN PSYCHO), and I’m dying to see the world he’s designed in NACHO LIBRE.
I’m just starting to go back to the theater after a month or two of hibernation, and this was a great way to get back into the habit. I went in with fairly modest expectations, and I was struck by just how sharp and complete the film was. I think there’s something cute about the reports that the real Bettie Page doesn’t like the word “notorious” in the title. Her utter lack of appreciation for the irony is in keeping with the clear-eyed, open-hearted approach Mol takes to the role.
This week, I’m seeing UNITED 93, ABOMINABLE, A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION and something... else... something really groovy... so I’ll be back with looks at those this week, as well as a bit about GRINDHOUSE very soon. Until then...
"Moriarty" out.
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Sen. Bill Frist, that is
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and first!
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And This movie looks decent, and that Gretchen Mol certainly is quite foxy dolled up like Page
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Apr 17, 2006 10:50:48 PM CDT
shoulda been the real bettie page giving me a lap dance
by silver shamrock
hope this is good movie.
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is it mott hupfrel or gideon ponte?
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I'm gettin' antsy with whats really going on with that one...first it's shut down, then it's not, then it's shut down for good!!!
Great review by the way! -
Gideon Ponte's her production designer. And I originally really thought it was a shame that this film got made instead of the Martin Scorsese/Liv Tyler version, but now... I don't think we missed anything. This is about as good as I'd hope for the Bettie story.
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This movie's been getting great notices over the past few weeks, but it was pretty much dismissed by critics and audiences alike at the Toronto Festival last year. I was handed a ticket by someone who couldn't use it, but I couldn't use it, either, nor could I find anyone interested to whom to give it. In fact, I had brief chat with Mary Harron, and I remember deliberately steering clear of talking about how the film had been received, because I hadn't heard or read anything particularly positive. *** Well, after checking the IMDb, it seems as though the film has in fact been cut by nine minutes since it played the Festival. Hm. Now I'm interested in seeing it.
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Would probably help me lean towards seeing it.
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It would be pretty ridiculous for an actress to play Bettie Page and be afraid of nudity. One of the great things about Mol's performance is how she perfectly captures the way Bettie could pose completely undressed and still not seem dirty, no matter what the context. Mol's got an adorable '50s-style figure, too, natural and unaltered, and it gives the film an extra level of charm.
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The first thing I thought coming out of "The Descent" was, "I wish it had been directed by Mary Harron."
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Despite how beautifully it was filmed, I found that the film - aside from a single conversation with fetish photographer John Willie - never really explores the dichotomy of Page's life- though brought up in a deeply religious household, she had absolutely no problems with posing nude. How did she arrive at her rationalization that posing for pictures must be her talent, gifted to her from God?
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...pulling a sword from a stone in Arthur.
Butt seriously, I can't wait to see this. Real Bettie, whatever she was wearing, always has such a cute, apple pie smile or a "oooh" cupie doll look (anyone remember Jane from the Daily Mirror? - there was a film made with Glynis Barber from Blake's 7 and Dempsey and Makepeace - but I digress). She was the original Suicide Girl. Without the lesbianism (please take with a dose of a Costanza - "not that there's ANYTHING wrong with that...") -
Where Bettie's life turns sour and she winds up in an institution? Yeah, that would suck.
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And I love it. Don't get me started on how ridiculous it is that Lost in Translation won for best screenplay. And sure, Ephron has done a good movie, but look at the rest of what she's done, and what she's done lately (Bewitched). I am glad to see that Haron continues to do a good job, deals with interesting topics, and hopefully she'll only continue to amaze in the future.
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This movie has one thing going for it: It made me think Gretchen Mol was a better actress. But it still sucks. What pisses me off is every review I have seen for it describes the film that should have been, not the one that is. This movie SHOULD be about repression, about why Bettie of all people captured so many imaginations, etc. As it is, it just seems like the Carmen Electra story done as a period piece. I really hoped this would be a good, subversive movie that would sort of peel the scab off of the sexual repression of the era, but instead it just kinda lets the story happen in front of us, and that story is quite boring and standard. A major dissappointment.
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I will never, ever understand people's fascination with this...skank. There are about 7 or 8 million better looking women from that era alone. Yeck, ugh, bleh... Maybe after a few drinks?...........................................................................................................Nooppe, stijll uygly
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From what I have seen this was a missed opportunity to tackle the 2nd wave of the Macarthy era when they went after comics and erotica after Edward R. Murrow spanked their asses. For those who don't know, Betty fled New York when the Government started relentlessly harrassing her and Irving Klaw. She's kept pretty quiet about most of the details since now this is ancient history for her, but she settled down, went to work for Rev. Billy Graham for a few years and built a family. She lives quietly somewhere in California and those with a sense of taste have respected her desire for privacy and to be remembered as she was in her youth. Now that corporate america owns most of the porn industry it's off the theocon hit list, but they still take pot shots like the new 2257 law that has shutdown a large number of independent internet sites or forced them to move offshore (now we're outsourcing our PORN!). Betty and the Klaws suffered under the hands of Hoover's FBI Machine under the control of a bored, aloof Eisnerhower whose only contributions were Interstate Gridlock(despite the interstate highway system originally being FDR's idea) and mutilating the lyrics of the Pledge of Allegiance in a racist, childish tantrum over the burgeoning civil rights movement and irrational fears over communism. -
I'll have an order of both the original and new. (Let's have a huge dvd release with lots of bonus features.)
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When The Notorious Bettie Page opens in Nashville on May 12th at the Belcourt Theatre, they're having a live Burlesque show opening night too! Check it - http://www.belcourt.org/
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Just imagine it for a moment- no video cassettes, no scrambled channel 43, no free downloads.... I feel so cold... so cold...
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you can say that everyone was repressed and unhappy, but i say there's a beautiful, and wholesomely sexy, innocence about an age in which Bettie was risque, and that it's a great shame that we've lost that. nowadays our tastes are so tainted and blunted by unrestrained excess. too much of anything ends up making you sick. ah, for our innocence lost; hooray for Bettie and her guileless charm!
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Whole heartly agree Osmosis Jones. In fact even in Mulholland`s Falls Connely is a dead ringer for Betty Page. Everythng`s there: full figured young dark hair chick, set in the 50s..naked. I think Grenchen Mol is too "sunny" and thin to play a sexy pin-up from the 50s. Because back then these were women not anorexic girl actresses.
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...at the Gladiator screening in San Francisco, and we had both read the script adaptation of American Psycho. We were both pretty convinced that it was a mess, didn't work at all and was needlessly crazy. We had pretty much written it off, as the tone the final product gained didn't come off at all on the script. Somehow, a few months later, the film came out, and we realized what it is Harron was trying to do. The script was exploitation, but the film was a satire. What the shit...(nope, no point to this post at all. I just wanted to reminisce.)
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